At Bushey Meads students take a very active role in running the school and help to take decisions that shape our ongoing school improvement journey. Nearly 60 students meet every half term as part of the active Student Parliament and, although their work is overseen by our Student Leadership Coordinator Mr Burley, the students very much run the meetings. At their last meeting they discussed whether or not the school should continue providing Student Planners to students at the start of every academic year and whether they are still a necessary tool in their equipment for learning. Following their discussion, two Year 8 students – Kush in 8M and Angelina in 8B, came to the Senior Leadership Team meeting on Monday evening of this week to present their findings and take part in a discussion and decision making process to move this agenda forward.

Their professional presentation was very helpful in crystallising the views of the students across the school and ensured that the right decision was made. The Deputy Headteacher and Assistant Headteachers joined me in thanking them for their work. Overall, particularly following the pandemic and move towards more online learning platforms and the embedded use of Edulink, it was felt that students do not need to record their home learning in their planners, as it is all recorded on Google Classroom and Edulink. This means that the majority of the pages in the Student Planner are obsolete. Students commented that they do appreciate and like some of the pages at the front and rear of the planner and, if possible they should still be provided, although some of the information at the back is available online or in text books provided by the school, so again not entirely necessary. Molst classrooms also provided their own mini whiteboards so again it is not always necessary to use the mini whiteboard at the back of the planner.

Students did comment that they would like some form of notebook to record important information about school life, dates and activities though. Taking all these important views into account, as a school we will be looking to source or produce a notebook with some key information pages in for all students from September. Deputy Headteacher Mr Searle will be discussing how to facilitate this over the coming weeks. In the meantime we would like to thank our hard working Student Parliament and especially Kush and Angelina for their helpful presentation, input into the leadership discussion and pertinent comments that will help our school move forward positively and continue to support all students as effectively as we can.